Chapter 51: 50: The Standing Stones

Wilson kept his speech over the tannoy short.

“We’ve all been lied to. We’ve all been imprisoned, tortured, experimented on. Tonight we’re free, and tonight we’re going to take revenge for what the Pryces have done to us. You have a choice. You can follow me and fight, or you can run and hide. If you hide, rest assured the Pryces will find you again, they will drag you back to this hellhole... but as long as you follow my orders, you will have your freedom and you will have your revenge!”

Wilson’s brief speech did its intended job.

Listening to him, you’d have thought they’d locked him up in there for years instead of three days. His voice had adopted his commanding, not-to-be-questioned tone that whipped the prisoners into a frenzy of anger and desire for revenge.

He talked, and the supernatural prisoners listened, and once he was done, we left.

As Alice had said, the mansion was deserted. The Pryces’ private soldiers were in Avebury, two miles away. It wasn’t hard to tell in which direction we needed to go. An unnatural light shone in the distance, shards of silent lightning jumping upwards from the ground and into the clear night sky.

The village of Avebury had been cleared by the time our orange jumpsuit wearing group got to the outskirts of the field of battle. Major Wilson and I snuck ahead.

Despite Major Wilson’s speech, half of the prisoners had fled. Taking revenge was less important to them than running as far away as possible. Some of them started a fire in the mansion on their way out, determined to burn their prison to the ground.

That left us numbering fifteen. A bloodthirsty group of unwashed nightmares, ready to gut and kill: three ragged angels, their wings dirty, their silver-white hair unkempt and the colour of urine. Willing, for one night only, to put their holy crusade against all other supernatural creatures aside in order to take the Pryces down. Two scarred werewolves, their emaciated bodies and broken claws a testament to the tortures they’d endured. Five snarling, bitter demons, including Doctor Pierce and Balthazar. An actual damned troll, all seven and a half ugly feet of him. A vampire - Alice, a djinn – Dee, whatever Major Wilson was, and me.

Fifteen hungry, scraggy half-breeds, scientific experiments, supernaturals and demonic monstrosities against sixty armed, trained and well-fed soldiers and one power-mad warlock.

We raced across the fields through the freezing darkness, blood pounding in our ears, fury in our veins. We skirted around the village and found a copse of trees from which we could observe the proceedings.

Wilson turned to Balthazar.

“On my signal, attack,” he said. “And don’t hold back.”

“What will the signal be?”

“People dying.”

Major Wilson and I moved ahead of the others, racing along a ridge under the cover of darkness and slipping down behind one of the two standing stones known as the Southern Entrance, a short distance from the Southern Inner Circle. We surveyed the scene a hundred metres from us, the huge stones keeping us both covered.

The Pryces had set up around the southern inner stone circle. A dozen or so of the original stones were all that remained, many of them smaller than a person. But there was enough power in the rest of the structure to achieve what Vincent wanted. To open the first portal to Arcadia in over seventy years and drain all the power for himself and his twin sister.

Around sixty men and women stood between the Pryces and us. Four vans were dotted around the outskirts of the outer circle, and two helicopters had landed in a field further away.

The stones of the inner southern circle had various wires and instruments attached to them, long cables running into the back of a van from where Victoria was monitoring what was happening.

Vincent, standing tall, was walking around the stones, energy flashing around his hands. A portal like one I’d seen at High Wycombe was open, power rushing out of it and into Vincent’s body. The glowing we’d seen from a couple of miles away was growing in intensity as the power rushed through the portal, light spilling outwards and upwards, creating crazy shadows.

I spotted Jess. She was standing next to Victoria, who was explaining to Jess what was going on. Jess looked pale, scared. She nodded listlessly as Victoria jabbed at a screen here, a reading there, clapped her hands together. Victoria was trying to groom Jess in the same way she’d tried to groom me, thrilled to have a spectator who she could explain everything to. Another attempt to gain a protégé.

I turned to Major Wilson and saw an expression on his impassive face that I took a second to recognise.

Sheer disbelief.

“What is that?” He said, pointing at the glowing circle of energy that Vincent was drawing power from.

“It’s a portal to another dimension.”

Major Wilson shook his head. “Thirty years in this job. Never seen anything like it.”

“All that power in their hands can’t be allowed,” I said.

“That’s without a doubt,” Major Wilson replied. “Right. We’ll go back and split into two teams, one attacking from the west and one from the south, Ethan, you’ll… ETHAN!”

I was already out of there, racing across the field as fast as I could. In my pumped up state, that was pretty fast. I had my mission, Major Wilson had his. Besides, I knew I could handle this. Something had been changing in me over the last few days; the more I’d felt the fire in my body, the more I’d been able to control it. Before all of this madness, my strength and speed had come about from feeling angry or scared, as adrenaline shot through my system. Since I’d been using my abilities more and more in the last few days, I was gaining control over them.

With a dozen murderous monsters at my back, not to mention Major Wilson, my priority was getting Jess out of there before the killing started. I’d had a quiet word with Dee as we’d neared the combat zone. As soon as we had Jess, we were gone.

Sure, I was furious with Victoria for her lies and betrayal, and I wanted to stop her lunatic schemes if it was possible, but keeping Jess safe mattered to me the most.

The adults and the monsters could sort out the rest.

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“I’m coming with you,” Dee had said as we’d raced towards the stones.

“No,” I’d replied, “You hang back. If I can’t get Jess out of there, then it’s up to you.”

Dee nodded.

“Are you sure about this, Ethan?”

“I’m really not, but I don’t know what else to do.”

I still didn’t want to kill anyone and I didn’t want anyone to die. I didn’t really give a damn about revenge at that point.

Not then, at any rate.

That would come later.

At the time, I still thought there might be a way to stop all of this with no bloodshed. If I could just bring Victoria to her senses, persuade her to drop the mad scheme she and her brother had hatched. I wanted Victoria to go back to the person I’d known, or thought I’d known. I was still clinging to the idea that somewhere inside her there was a shred of decency, despite everything I’d seen and everything she’d done.

In retrospect, I was being laughably naïve.

The security forces, dressed in their standard grey camouflage gear and carrying assault rifles, were spread out around the edges of the outer stones. Most of them were paying more attention to Vincent’s light display and the portal than anything else. Too dumbfounded to know what to do, not understanding what was taking place, or what the stakes were.

I raced the short distance from the copse where we’d been hiding towards the nearest soldier, catching him with a punch in the stomach before he could react. I moved like lightning, the fire in my leg muscles making me impossibly fast. Before they realised what was happening, I’d made it to the van. Knocked down the guard that was standing with Victoria and Jess. That was as far as I got before being surrounded by four men pointing their assault rifles at me.

I stopped, hands raised. It was a good enough run. It got me in front of Jess and Victoria.

Victoria raised a sharp hand, and four trigger fingers relaxed. They kept their rifles trained on me, but didn’t shoot. Jess looked at me with her eyes wide.

“Ethan...” Victoria drawled.

She didn’t seem surprised to see me.

Bursts of light and twisting shadows swept across us, the white light so strong and the shadows so dark that colours were almost reduced to stark black and white. A hundred metres from us, Vincent was absorbing power as it spewed out of the portal, laughing with the thrill of it.

“Stop this, Victoria,” I said. “Stop all of this before it’s too late.”

Victoria laughed. She glanced across at one of the monitors hooked up to the cables running around the five standing stones where Vincent and his portal were. She smiled, pleased with the readings. Then she returned her attention to me. Mockery in her voice.

“Ethan the hero has to save the day, doesn’t he? Good grief, I wish you’d grow up. You have no idea what you are interfering with.”

“Please, Victoria. Take these men and get out of here. Get everyone out of here. Now.”

A flicker of fear crossed Victoria’s face.

Through the high of her triumphant madness, she realised that if I was free, then the others must be as well.

“What have you done?” she choked.

“They’re out, Victoria. All of them, and they’re coming for you. You need to run, all of you.”

Maybe I should have just left them all to it. There was still a part of me that was clinging to the hope I could reason with Victoria. Despite everything she’d done, all the lies and the murder of Marian, I didn’t want to believe she was irredeemable. She’d done such a good job of faking being a decent person that I still couldn’t accept there wasn’t a glimmer of humanity in her.

I was wrong. I was horribly wrong.

I had yet to see her worst side. Her truly vindictive streak.

“You idiot,” she whispered. “What have you done, Ethan?”

The sudden sound of gunfire and screams answered her question for me.

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